March 31 - Schwerin

The sun was holding out, so we decided to make an Ausflug (see Ausflugs) to Schwerin for the day. But first, as they say, we had to buy some Cool Max things that were going on sale at Aldi that morning. From past experience, we knew there would be a rush to get the good stuff, so we popped over to Aldi shortly after it opened at 9 to buy Cool Max shirts/blouses, underwear, pants, and a jacket. Actually, we had to do it in two trips since we first had to buy what we thought would be the right size, run back home and try it on, and then return to Aldi to stock up. I did in fact encounter the dreaded Female Feeding Frenzy that occurs at really good sales on things like women’s underwear. Monika reports that in the good old days in Hamburg the stampede for sales items would be bad enough that people would get injured and have to be carted off to the hospital. I was just kind of shouldered aside but no clearly offensive actions were taken so I waited for a gap in the traffic and then planted myself firmly at the underwear counter. Fending off the competition, I found the seven pairs of men’s underwear I wanted for myself, but I could only find four pairs for Monika—the Female Feeding Frenzy had apparently picked the bones of the sales bins clean of women’s underwear in her size. Meanwhile, Monika found the tops she wanted plus a pair of Cool Max pants and jacket for me. Actually, we made out very well indeed as the tops were 6 Euro each compared to 20-30 dollars apiece in the U.S., and Cool Max underwear we’ve just never seen at home. The men’s stuff was the typical over-built German version of underwear that in the past has been durable enough to last me just about forever. Honestly, I think I still have some of the underwear I bought in Germany in 1973 at home and wear it occasionally (if you’re counting, that’s 30 years!). It is as if they build their underwear with the same kind of overkill that they use to build their cars for driving 200 kilometers per hour on the Autobahn.

I was in fact driving on the aforementioned Autobahn heading east for Schwerin shortly after we finished our Aldi shopping trips. Watching out for the blistering fast left lane traffic came back very quickly, which was a good thing for all of us. I still tried to hold 120 kilometers per hour, which was slightly faster than the trucks doing 100-110 and quite a bit slower than the left lane folks trying to push their cars to the very limit (see Wanderung 2). I really think the Autobahn driving is more difficult because there is such a variety of speeds that you just can’t use any expectations about the cars coming up on you—cars passed me at speeds of anywhere from 125 to the Porsches at well over 200, which can be rather unnerving. But the three weeks of driving last year gave me enough confidence that I could relax and almost enjoy it since the traffic was sparse and we didn’t hit any backups.

We found our way to the same place we parked last year and walked across the bridge that connects the mainland to the island on which the palace is located. They were not offering guided tours this year, so we bought a ticket that allowed us to go in and walk around on our own. We saw the beautifully restored rooms on the 3rd and 4th stories plus a very nice collection of porcelain artifacts on the 2nd floor that we had not seen last year. The porcelain included pieces the equal of what we saw last year in Dresden at the Zwinger and in Meissen, but had more of the plates and dishes belonging to the local duke. Lois thought the palace was “amazingly beautiful”.

As an American mongrel, I was amused at how much emphasis the ducal family had on their ancestors. Three or four rooms on the upper level were dedicated to huge floor-to-ceiling paintings of the ancestors going back to the 1300s. On two very large brass plaques on either side of the main gallery, the ancestry of the duke was traced all the way back to 1136, with the continuous line of descent emphasized by having the names of those persons filled in with dark black paint. This engraved family tree made it clear that the line of descent was patrilineal and I was interested to see that the principle of primogeniture was rigidly followed. Of course, the whole thing ended when the duke and all the other German royalty were tossed out on their ear after Germany lost World War I. The duke was allowed to take the palace furniture, so the museum curators have had to buy some of it back to display or just have pieces from the period. As I recall, Kurt Tucholsky reported that the son who would have become the next Kaiser of Germany ended up being a haberdasher instead, which shows you the inherent quality of the German nobility of the time.

After seeing the interior we walked around the palace grounds a while, but once again we were so early that nothing was blooming. Some day we’ll have to visit that palace in the summer! But we did enjoy the statues around the palace and on the grounds.

With no backups (rare in Germany) the trip to Schwerin took us only 1½ hours each way, which made it a good day trip from Hamburg. In the evening we watched the German national soccer team play the Belgian national team while I typed my journal, and Lois and Monika alternated between reading and hacking away at crossword puzzles, a fundamentally pointless but mentally engaging task.